The State Duma may adopt a resolution condemning what it refers to as West Germany's annexation of East Germany as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, state news agency TASS reported Wednesday.
East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, merged with West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1990. The move was brought about by a reunification treaty, the product of extensive negotiations between the Soviet Union and Western nations.
Communist lawmaker Nikolai Ivanov drafted a resolution drawing what he sees as parallels between Russia's 2014 absorption of Crimea and West Germany's 1990 absorption of East Germany.
Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin spearheaded the initiative of pushing Ivanov's resolution through after facing harsh criticism at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe this week over Russia's newest region.
Naryshkin told reporters that the logic behind Germany's reunification can be applied to Russia's absorption of Crimea in March. "We are always opposed to 'double standards,'" he said, according to TASS.
International leaders and news outlets have broadly applied the term "annexation" to the outcome of a controversial referendum in March, when Crimeans declared independence from Ukraine, and asked Russia to adopt it as a region.
Shortly thereafter, the United Nations approved a resolution describing the referendum as illegal. The resolution was supported by 100 states, while 11 nations voted against it. There were 58 abstentions.
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